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These people are neither misanthropes nor cannibals; whether they are ruffians I know not; but for certain they are kind, good-natured friends; friends who have the courage to tell you disagreeable things all your life along, who are rough and sharp as currycombs, under the pretence that they are yours to command, in all the mishaps of life, and in the hour of extreme unction, all their worth will be known.

Agony to the nervous visitor alone; for the inhabitants of Amboise love their shrieking saws and currycombs, just as they love their shrieking parrots and cockatoos. They gather in happy crowds to watch the blue-sashed boy, and drink in the noise he makes. We drink it in, too, as he is immediately beneath our windows.

The department is orderly and neat, a mute tribute to those who patronize it. Into the show-cases has crept every article of small dimension that had no habitat or kind upon the shelves around from laces to lead pencils. Upon nails in the rafters of the ceiling swing buckets and dippers and lamps, currycombs and brushes.

Work was in progress there: the play of currycombs, the whirl of the cutting-box, the noise of the mangers, the bellowing of calves, the rich streamy sounds of the milking. He called his men to him one after another, laying out the work of the day.

His nurse attended him with a bucket full of burgoo, or hasty pudding, with which she occasionally fed him out of the cook's iron ladle. Two or three stout men were habited as sea nymphs, to attend on the goddess: they carried a looking-glass, some currycombs, a birch-broom, and a pot of red paint, by way of rouge.

From that moment we were excellent friends; I did business with him for many years, and our intercourse was always warm and friendly. Mr. Shaw's father was originally a working maker of currycombs, an article, before his day, entirely made by hand.

These people are neither misanthropes nor cannibals; whether they are ruffians I know not; but for certain they are kind, good-natured friends; friends who have the courage to tell you disagreeable things all your life along, who are rough and sharp as currycombs, under the pretence that they are yours to command, in all the mishaps of life, and in the hour of extreme unction, all their worth will be known.

In the fresh, still morning, with the camp just waking up and the curious Turkish currycombs clinking away over by the tethered horses, our aerial visitor added only a pleasant excitement to this life in the open, and we went on with our dressing with great satisfaction, little dreaming how soon we were to look at one of those little flying specks quite differently.

Besides his various branches of foreign commerce, he was a manufacturer of currycombs, iron and brass candlesticks, frying pans, fenders, cast and cut nails, and various other goods; and, upon the whole, he may be said to have been the most active and efficient merchant and manufacturer, of his generation, in the Midland Counties.

I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les Miserables" Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation lent round; and where men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs.